


Once Is Always

by IneffableWitch



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Drabble, Freeform, Gen, Pre-Book: The Last Battle (Narnia), just after they come home the first time, picking up the pieces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 17:16:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableWitch/pseuds/IneffableWitch
Summary: They were adults when the came across the lantern, but children when they fell out of the wardrobe.





	Once Is Always

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from my tumblr.

The first day back in England, every one of the Pevensie children managed an extravagant fall. 

Their legs are shorter than they should be, but they can’t say this out loud. 

Weeks go by. Eventually, they all relearn how to walk. 

But there are other, stranger things they can’t relearn. 

Like how:

Lucy is eight. 

Lucy is twenty-three. 

She can’t remember how to be small and unimportant, or how to play children’s games. Fifteen years in another world have left her used to being listened to, relied upon. The horrors of war are far less frightening than the horror of ignorance, of tiny uncalloused hands. Or waking in the night remembering the culture, the world she left behind.

Like how:

And Susan is twelve - nearly - thirty.

With small children of her own under her care. She can’t forget the feel of them growing inside her. 

She can’t unlearn the way her ears are always listening for them. Years later she is still celebrating birthdays for people who live only in her memory, only knee high. At night she’d kept awake wondering about the strangers she gave birth too. 

So she keeps trying to forget.

For the boys it is different. But not better:

Peter is thirteen and full of anger. The adults call it puberty. The adults don’t realize the shadow in his eyes is the same shadow in the eyes of returning soldiers. High King Peter, with so many lives under his command now commands nothing, and knows nothing. Responsibility and questions weigh on him. 

But Edmund wakes up one day and realizes that after so many years no stranger can ever go to war with him about a child betraying his family for roses and sugar. His worst mistake weighs only on his mind now. And somehow, it’s this small silver lining that lets him pull their family back from the brink. He is no longer the broken one, no longer haunted by a child he no longer is.

Even so.

The Pevensie’s are adrift in a world of smoke and debris, and the rolling empty countryside. The war here is not fought with swords and fangs, but gas, and fire from above.

A fate worse than death is not being turned to stone. 

There is no Lion coming at the eleventh hour to save them all. No lion except the one they carry inside themselves. 

And that would have to be enough. 

So each Pevensie found a way to matter, to change, to save. 

And a little bit of Aslan crept in around the corners when they needed him most. 

There was a snap and a growl to Lucy her mother had never seen. 

A spine of unyielding stone in Susan. 

A soft listening silence in Edmund. 

And in Peter a flash of fang, and reckless hope. 

The Pevensies are not in Narnia. 

So they took part of it with them.


End file.
